Pirin traded blows with Lord Three. They circled around the outer ring of the city. With each strike, Lord Three hit with effort and concentrated greenblood Essence. He enforced it with Essentia, giving it the shape of his dragon-bat, and infusing it with extra will.

Pirin couldn’t defend against such techniques. He dodged and retreated, spinning and leaping down streets. Techniques tore apart swaths of buildings, stray Shattered Palms ripped down the edges of houses and shattered windows.

But Lord Three was still faster and stronger, and though he couldn’t harm Pirin’s sword, Pirin never got a chance to land a full blow.

The closest he got was leaving a light slash across Lord Three’s cheek, slicing through the man’s enhanced skin with a Reign-enhanced blade. Lord Three did much better for himself. With each technique, he cleaved off another chunk of Pirin’s flesh. Pirin bled from a gash in his side, one of his ribs was cracked, and the outer edge of his left bicep was gone. He’d still pretended he couldn’t sense anything on his left side.

What was that about using our tricks to help us? Gray exclaimed. Pirin, when you get hit, I feel it too!

“I’m working on it,” Pirin panted, jumping away from a plummeting stream of greenblood. “I need your help, Gray.”

What is it?

He couldn’t say it aloud without giving away his plan to Lord Three, but he directed his thoughts and pushed with intent over to her: I need you to distract him. Attack with a heavy swoop, and try to knock his bat off his back.

What are you going to do? she asked.

I’ll cover you. He’ll lash out, but we…we should have enough of his fighting style and experience to create a predictive model.

He patted his haversack, where Gottrur still hid. The little fox had taken a bit of a beating in all the smashing through buildings and crashing around, but Pirin had done his best to protect the Wraith.

Why can’t you use it now? Gray asked.

I don’t know what happens if I get close to him, Pirin answered mentally. And I need to know if I’m going to use my full arsenal.

Alright. This better work, though.

I won’t let you get hurt.

Pirin switched to his mask and activated his Reyad, allowing himself to draw on gnatsnapper techniques. As soon as he sensed Gray beginning her dive, he prepared a Winged Fist.

As expected, Lord Three turned to counter the threat, but Pirin knocked it aside with a column of concentrated wind. The technique flew off-course before dispersing altogether, and Gray sank her talons into the dragon-bat’s wings. She ripped the smaller creature off Lord Three’s shoulder.

The bat fluttered its wings with such power that it broke out of Gray’s grip, but she still redirected it and threw it through the wall of a building.

Pirin seized the opportunity and charged. He reached out and struck the Unbound Lord with a flurry of wind-enhanced blows. He pushed on his arms with gusts of air to speed up his strikes, and he cleared the way around his sword, while strengthening its fuller with manifested gnatsnapper Essence.

Lord Three blocked most of the blows, conjuring bat-shaped gauntlets around his wrists. We each strike he blocked, his tattoos glowed brighter. But, finally, one of Pirin’s strikes slipped through. Pirin left a gash across the Unbound’s chest, and one of his knotted tattoos broke open. Greenblood spewed out the wound and mixed with red mid-air, but Lord Three quickly wrenched the gash under control.

Then he caught the blade in a gauntleted hand. “My turn,” he said. His tattoos bulged, and he lashed out. His tattoos dimmed, directing all their accumulated power into the strike, and a full glove of greenblood formed around his hand.

Pirin ducked to the side, but the strike still caught him on the shoulder. He manifested Essence in the air in front of the fist, a desperate defence, but it barely took any of the force out of the blow. Blood spurted out from the wound.

Pirin tumbled backward through the air and smashed through the roof of a building, then landed hard on his back in the center of a plaza on the other side. He gasped, then rolled over onto his stomach.

“Had enough yet?” Lord Three shouted. He plowed through the same building, ignoring the doors, and stepped across the edge of the plaza.

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“Yeah, just about.” Pirin coughed up a mouthful of blood, groaned, then rolled onto his back.

Gray fluttered up onto the rooftop nearby, ready to pounce, and the dragon-bat swooped down to a statue at the center of the plaza.

Pirin reached down to his haversack and rubbed the top of Göttrur’s head, then shut his eyes and activated the technique. He used the Memory Chain, searching through the distant past for enemies who fought like Lord Three, or just felt like him with his oppressive, heavy presence and techniques.

Göttrur parsed the memories into packets and sorted them, while Pirin used Gray’s vision and his spiritual awareness to still give himself a sense of his surroundings.

Lord Three kept attacking, and Pirin resorted to simply dodging while he created his predictive model.

And when it finally formed in the back of his mind, he used it.

He gave it an instruction: win at any cost.

Switch to pure Essence. Two Shattered Palms, a set of sword swipes. Get close, reveal your armour to absorb a hit, then take a strike on your blind side.

Take the hit?

He wouldn’t be strong enough to block it.

The hit would send him tumbling through the air and skidding across the plaza, and Lord Three would catch up, then pummel him with strikes. He wouldn’t be able to fight back. He’d lose.

He tried every combination, every potential strategy, but it had the same result: Lord Three was just too strong.

Perhaps we can just…keep running? Gray asked. Even inside his mind, her voice was panting. They were both exhausted, physically and mentally.

Desperation welled up inside him, but he shut it down. “No,” he said, leaping away from another blast of greenblood with the help of a Winged Kick. “We’ll face him. We have to. We have to try. We win here, or we die here.”

He leapt up to a rooftop and landed in a crouch beside Gray. His chest heaved, his limbs ached, and blood dribbled from minor injuries all across his body. His heart thrummed too fast to register. Every breath was fire.

Gray’s wings drooped, and she swayed on her perch. Her mouth hung open. She panted. I suppose…I suppose we needed a good time to die, anyway.

Pirin winced. At least he’d go down swinging. That was the least he could do.

As Lord Three turned to face them, readying another bout of techniques, Pirin and Gray sprang forward. He used the predictive model to anticipate strikes, to know exactly where to hit and stab and block, but Lord Three was faster. Even the most perfect strikes, he dodged and evaded.

And when counter-attacked, holding a fang of greenblood in his hand and driving it toward Pirin’s chest with enough force to split a mountain, Pirin had to reveal his armour. There was no other way to live.

He dropped his soul-fortification technique and withdrew the leather sheets from his Inner World, then flooded all four Charges with Essence at once, fuelling them all without too much concentration.

The armour blocked the strike and refused to yield, but Pirin still skidded back a few feet.

“Ah, so that’s where it went,” said Lord Three. “But you can’t fuel that Charge forever.”

Pirin let the armour’s Charges deactivate, as the predictive model instructed him. It anticipated that if he left them active too long, the Essence would damage the perfectly-carved runes, and the Charges would lose their effectiveness.

Then, without an extra weight on his soul, he charged back in.

Pirin and Gray fought in unison, striking perfectly, anticipating counter attacks, and dodging when they needed to, but the plan crumbled. They reached the end of the road, and even the best predictions, the best outcome, led them to a dead end.

Lord Three struck Pirin in the forehead, and specks whirled in Pirin’s vision. A gash tore his thigh, and another ripped through his side, damaging his hip. The pain hazed his mind, and he barely had the wit to activate his chestplate’s Charge and save himself from a lethal strike.

“You were always nothing, Embercore,” Lord Three said. He leaned over and spat on Pirin’s chest. “For the trouble you gave me.”

Pirin blinked, then turned his head to the side. Through the blaring needles of pain in his body and whirling discomfort in his channels, he could barely see Gray, laying limp on the paving stones, her wings splayed.

It was…worth a try… she said.

No. Pirin needed the last revelation, and he needed it now. He inhaled, and condensed all the meditation he’d done over the past weeks. Everything seemed just a little clearer at death’s doorstep. It was like taking a walk in cool, frigid air. Even as another spasm of pain wracked his body, and as Lord Three drove a spear of greenblood through Pirin’s gut, he barely registered it between the cool peace.

A light shone from above, and a shimmer of gold washed over everything. He was fading away, the material of his soul returning to the Eane, dying.

But there was no better time to visualize it. He clung desperately to his soul, holding it tight for a few more minutes.

If he was going to do this, now was the time.

The distant sounds of fighting and screaming and blowing horns, whistling wind and light pounding heartbeat all faded away.

All his life, he’d been weaker than the other wizards around him. But he’d turned it against them. He’d pulled through. He persevered. It was who he was.

He didn’t need hours of meditation to tell him who he was. With the Eane laid out before him, with his life flashing before his eyes, all became clear.

“My weaknesses make me strong,” Pirin uttered through clenched teeth. “My scars make me strong. Even if I’m half in the ground, I’ll keep moving.”

Like harnessing Reign, he condensed himself to a single purpose. A sword cut. A spear stabbed.

“I rise.”

He’d always favoured birds. He’d always sought to soar. Climbing was never not an option.

He inhaled and drew in a breath, and tendrils of golden energy, slices of the Eane, flowed out of the environment. They surged toward him and flooded into his limbs, imbuing him with strength.

He was advancing.